A Medical Wager (Closed)

(Closed per this thread)

Petals fly while fragrant winds blow. Noonsun peer through canopy of grove
to scatter golden in the air, cloy and thick with pollen and spore.
Isylle, her red dress fluttering, strolled between the olibanum.
Wherever she passed, flowers bloomed, straining to please the queen before,
to show all their colors and hues and then falling dead to the floor.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Her thought bent upon a wager about her private arcanum,
a wager best resolved right here, where they welded shut Death's black door.
It was surely cheating to see if she could punish and not kill.
The wager's terms were vague enough; it specified neither place nor
others' help. Did the monks here count? Then again, who was keeping score?
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Sooner or later those monks must submit some soul to foot the bill:
a boy, a girl, any will do - as long as it was not a bore.
If it were a bore, Isylle thought, then she will have to make the fun.
Perhaps study in animal functional anatomy or
give this Citadel room a new, thorough, crimson decor.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Isylle twirled her white parasol, her eyes glittering in the sun.
She heard the distant click of lock; at long last, she must wait no more.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Starr crossed the threshold, and clambered through the tunnel to the arena true. Stuck in the dusty corridor that served as an antechamber for almost an hour, the goblin was, by now, quite angry. He hissed, wheezed, and rattled his bone-covered staff. The crowd, in response to the arrival of the fetid creature, could only break out in booing and hissing.

An Innari cared not for civilized standards.

There was only the Wood, and the Hearth, and…he stopped, mid stride, and set his fetish’s tip onto the grass.

“You are not civilized…” he said, softly, at first, before he repeated himself with rumbustious relish. He recognised the other worldly glamour his opponent, across a floral verge, was shrouded in. “You are Wyld.” The world rolled off his warty tongue like a cruel union of blessing and curse. To the Innari, the goblins of Scara Brae, Wyld meant Fae, ethereal, unlike-man.

“I come in peace,” he bellowed, shaking as if in a trance, though in truth, it was the fever root he had chewed in anticipation for the conflict, “you,” he pointed a dirty, grubby finger at the opposition, “however, will leave in pieces!”

Without further ado, the goblin maddeningly charged.

Creaking of hinges heralded tranquility coming undone;
a mean creature, crooked and green, was vomited out by the door.
Isylle, her auburn hair swaying, turned towards the vestibule
and gazed upon the animal, the ugliness unlooked-for,
the malodorous little beast that none could possibly adore.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

"You, of miniscule import, equal with the least corpuscule,
whose life is brief as a bubble and whose mind mimics an old boar,
are but a sandfly in the eyes of we, the forever high-born."
The beast's headlong charge neared the fey, clods flew, uprooted from the floor.
From Isylle's hand fell a small cloud - rose-seeds by the hundreds and more.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

The cloud touched on earth and sprouted sharp-thorned branches big as bull's horn,
Verdant leaves and bright pink blossoms dotted this cruel, sharp, thick wall or,
as a learned marshal may say, a peerlessly-built abatis.
"Be skewered on beauty unmatched. Charge, charge like mortal men of yore."
From behind her wide, deep bastion, fearing no melee anymore,
the Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Starr raised an eyebrow as best as a goblin could. His wrinkled, unwashed skin peeled back, revealing bloodshot iris and glistening pupil. He, despite having seen the world breath before his fetid form, could not quite believe his eyes.

“I do not understand you.” He said, quite flatly.

He shook his staff for dramatic effect, and then took it into both palms. He lowered his head, as if to pray, and then let out a bloodcurdling cry befitting of a possessed creature; a babbling, insane, and incredulous cacophony of noise. If anyone had bothered to ask, Starr would have explained the process of conjuring shamanistic mana in eloquent, intellectual, and insightful detail. Since nobody bothered, he screamed a second time.

“<Iddu iddu adda adda, num jak!>” he roared, as if his life depended on it.

Fire formed around his fingertips, little gobbets of rage given life. He shook them, as if to quell the flames, but when they only grew stronger, he stopped his resistance. Standing upright he glared at her. No matter the flowery verse, or the haughty visage of ‘beauty’, Starr had come with one intention implanted firmly in his mind;

Bloody death.

He let loose the fireball.

Fire, that makes into smoke and ash whatever its sleep-mat is,
fire, that clears shade and brings sun down to the darkest forest floor,
how she hated and loved its kiss! Its wild spirit runs in the wild,
its tamed tongue licks the warm teapot, its red glow lights the oven's door,
brings all the civility that Isylle, the hedon, asks for.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

She extends a thread of her will - invisible, subtle, and mild -
to the hedge whose thorny branches grows and intertwines even more.
Fire, a fluid, streams yet through the gaps; a diminished puff still sought her.
The parasol interposes; it withers, charring, as flames pour.
A brief, stunned silence passes by. Isylle drops the husk, now ignored.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Sunflowers appear left of her. Sunflowers appear right of her.
Each stalk taller than a man's head. Each dial plump with seeds by the score.
"Let these spines drink of your ichor, embrace like mangroves on a shore."
With ghastly noise that ears abhor, ten thousand seeds suddenly soar
over smouldering rose-bush and towards Starr's head they howl and roar!
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

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The fairy’s parasol burnt. This made Starr excitable. The fairy, however, remained woefully unescorted to death’s door. This made Starr miserable. He felt his heart waver in between spurts of adrenaline and glum remorse.

When the very world burst to life, the shaman cast aside his doubts, and took his staff firmly into both hands. He tilted it forwards, defiant, and watched the flickering, twitching, and snapping mass of foliage approach. It leered down at him, tendrils of nature’s wrath given menacing form.

They did something quite unexpected before they lurched to ensnare. They let lose a cacophony, a roar that would have rivalled even Skargo’s din.

“Cease your prattling!” Starr roared back, casting the staff right, and his left hand upwards. He vomited in tandem with his motion, perhaps not as intentionally.

When the wave of seeds struck, they splashed against his carrot addled chin first; knocked him back second, and scoured away all résistance third. He fell flat on his back, rolled over, and came to an abrupt halt on the dew-laden dip between verges.

He rose. Another fireball formed in quick riposte.

War was born from burnt summer attire and bruised, withered skin.

“I won’t miss again!”

"Miss? You?" She glances at the fire, "I will become your guarantor,
in today's small disagreement, that now you will miss nevermore."
Smoke clears as the burning hedge parts, opening a path for Isylle
through the sharp thorns and red flowers. Redmaw stands stained before
the gap, stained with seeds everywhere. It was fashionably mortal.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Face, leaves, and stalk of sunflower, witch hazel's explosive seed shell,
barbed burs of enchanter's nightshade, strong roots of palms on sandy shore,
spiteful, pointed thorns of wild rose, and belladonna's cruel poison.
Isylle's champion is a mongrel: beauty for face, hatred for core.
He has already lost this match; quite soon, his pleas she will ignore.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

She extends a thread of her will - essence of one growing season -
to the sleeping, young life ahead. Ten thousand seedlings she implores,
ten thousand seedlings raise their heads, ten thousand seedlings split their husks.
Thick roots crack the ground in their haste. Thorny stalks pierce up from the floor.
They grow around him, below him, upon him - a green underscore.
The Fairy of Flowers smiled.

Undeterred by nature’s violence, Starr stood his ground. He was, as far as goblins went, quite impressed. He sniffed the snot back into his gaping nostrils, and then stabbed his staff downwards. Something inside his bones creaked, crackled, and grew. It was powerful. It was natural. It was decadent.

Nature, unlike man, was bound to needs, as well as laws. Fickler than any blazing fire, and harsher than any winter, Starr did what came natural. He shepherded the flora of the wild to his whim. He disappeared in a sphere of silver, gabbling innate nonsense that made sense to only him.

The skeinsliver swirled, reflecting images of all things were, are, and could be. The dancing heads and thorns of the advancing madrigals and dancing dandelions rippled. They twisted. Inside, Starr saw all possible outcomes of his encounter, and pasts and futures that would have rendered a sane being insane.

With a snarling smile, he clenched the staff in both hands, and channelled the abjuration of Skargo, his Thayne out across the arena. He intended for the sphere to distract, beguile, and beautify all the horrors of the outside world.

Every passing second the water from the seeds fizzled away.